two things...

Two cool things have happened this week that have been great for me and Karen.

1. I finally got my raise and job promotion here at UK. The financial blessing is in the form of a 19.75% pay increase, which is really going to help us get out of debt faster! Karen's job also changed over earlier this month, which gave her a 12% pay increase. So God has blessed us financially this month by increasing our salaries by about $10,000 combined... not bad! Thanks God! With this extra money, we will also be able to increase our giving. The tithe amount from this will probably end up going towards our sister's mission work in Belarus. We haven't talked to her about this yet, but since she's reading this... Hi Kristi :).

2. Yesterday we met with the new minister in charge of overseeing parts of the couples ministry at Southland. He and his wife are very passionate about working with couples of all ages and marriage situations. We threw around a lot of ideas for how to move forward and begin doing more ministry for couples in the church, which is badly needed in our opinion. This is an awesome step for us in our ministry and we look forward to working on new curriculum, teaching more classes, and helping to plan for ministry. More to come on this later as things develop...